Working from home? You need them.
Tools that help you stay organized, productive, and connected.
Working from home is a reality. Be more productive now. One of the challenges is to collaborate and communicate with your team members. Teams need to be equipped with the right tools to be able to collaborate and communicate in real-time.
Productivity apps
When you work remotely, distractions can be your greatest enemy. If you’re struggling to stay productive while working from home, the following apps can help you stay focused:
● Freedom allows you to block distracting websites on your desktop or phone while you work.
● Focus@will provides lyric-free background music and a productivity tracker to help you get into the zone.
● Marinara Timer is a website with a customizable timer you can use to practice the Pomodoro method: a productivity technique where you work in cycles traditionally consisting of four 25 minute sprints separated by 5-minute breaks, with a final 15-minute break before the next cycle.
Project management tools
Common project management features include:
● Communication channels: Communication through comments, chat rooms, or messages.
● Timelines: The ability to create timelines for your projects.
● Boards: A digital analog to the bulletin board with sticky notes or cards.
● Gantt charts: A horizontal bar chart for charting task progression over time.
● Task management: A way to assign and track tasks for
Popular project management tools for remote teams include:
● Trello: From Kanban to Scrum, Trello gives you the digital boards, cards, and color-coding you need to implement your favorite visual project management methodology.
● Instagantt: Gantt charts are great for tracking and presenting the progress of multiple tasks over time.
● Basecamp: Projects are organized into camps with an HQ for managing multiple teams, with private/public workspaces for task/project management.
● Jira: A comprehensive project management platform with multiple project viewing options. Jira is also known for its robust bug tracking capabilities.
● Asana: Topping many lists for its slick UI/UX, Asana boasts multiple viewing options, but is best known for its Kanban-style boards and aesthetic timelines.
● Monday: Monday boasts most of the features you would expect from a project management platform. What makes it stand out is its modular project tracking templates, which make it easy to “build” trackers for new projects.
Video Conference apps
You’re not physically in the same room but that doesn’t mean you can’t still hold a meeting. There are many conferencing solutions available on the market, they should support the following features:
● Video/audio conferencing. You can communicate in real-time with multiple attendees via webcam and microphone. Video is optional and those who prefer to call in with their phones may do so with a provided call-in number.
● Screen sharing. Simple but effective, sometimes you have to share your screen to better present your ideas to a team.
● Chat room. A minimizable chat room to engage with a speaker without unmuting your mic, or to send private messages to other attendees.
● Shareable invite links. The ability to share a link to allow people to join a call. These links often allow one to join via their browser without downloading any apps, while still providing the instructions to allow them to do so if they desire better performance or additional features.
Here’s a look at some of the most popular conferencing apps:
● Google Hangouts Meet: It’s free, runs in your browser, and comes as part of the Google Suite with any Gmail account. Scheduled Google Hangouts calls are automatically added to your Google Calendar.
● Zoom: Zoom is known for its quality video and feature-rich free version. It has paid tiers and add-ons to help you scale your conferencing needs with your business.
● GoToMeeting/Webinar: This app is now known for its mobile-friendliness and ease of adoption. GoToMeeting is for teams while GoToWebinar is for presentations.
● WebEx: This is an awesome conferencing app you can use.
Virtual whiteboard collaboration tools
These tools give you a blank canvas with a toolbar to draw digital Kanban boards, process flow diagrams, and even app mockups depending on the needs of your team. Since it’s digital, it’s possible to use tags and assign tasks to users via interactive sticky notes and charts.
● Miro: Formerly known as RealtimeBoard, Miro is one of the pioneers in the digital whiteboarding space. The app also supports its own video conferencing and chatroom.
● Mural: The runner-up in the visual collaboration workplace space after Miro, Mural offers many of the same features except for the video conferencing and chat room. You can easily use your preferred conferencing app with a screen share for this purpose.
Team chat apps
Popular team chat apps include:
● Slack created a class of apps that exist as collaboration hubs for the office intended to replace email, text, and teleconferencing.
● Twist organizes messages into threads and appeals most to those who want a messenger hub that is a less live group chat and a more active forum.
● Ryvers for those who want a messenger hub that also supports task management.
● Microsoft Teams is for teams who already have a Microsoft Office 365 subscription and allows seamless integration with your documents.
Cloud file storage
Common cloud file storage tools include:
● Google Drive is part of the Google Suite that comes free with any Gmail account. It’s the shared drive solution of choice for independent contractors who work remotely full-time. Paid tiers are available for more storage.
● Dropbox is one of the first mainstream cloud file storage solutions that targeted regular users. The app lets you create a special local folder on your desktop that automatically syncs files to the cloud.
